4,000 a year executed by China, activists say

BEIJING (AP) - A United States human rights group says China executes around 4,000 people a year, the most in the world but half the number it did before ordering Supreme Court reviews of all death penalty cases in 2007. The San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation said on Tuesday that the decline was revealed at a seminar with Chinese officials earlier this month. The group said Chinese officials refused to say how many people were put to death annually but revealed the number fell 50 per cent after 2007. In 2006, state media estimated there were 8,000 executions a year. Dui Hui founder John Kamm urged China to be more open with its execution statistics, saying that transparency would help China achieve its goal of eventually abolishing the death penalty.